Sophie--Are you okay?

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Maddy
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Sophie--Are you okay?

Post by Maddy » Sun Jul 14, 2019 7:50 am

Apparently much of New York City remains in the dark.
WiseOne
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Re: Sophie--Are you okay?

Post by WiseOne » Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:46 am

Aw thanks!!! All was well, I live quite a ways outside the affected zone, and luckily I wasn't traveling in it at the time. My mom had come for her weekend visit so I was staying close to home.

Definitely it sucked for people caught on subway trains or elevators, or in sweltering apartments. The episode also has me thinking about getting some sort of electrical backup, because for whatever reason these events always happen when it's >90 degrees out.
Libertarian666
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Re: Sophie--Are you okay?

Post by Libertarian666 » Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:38 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:46 am
Aw thanks!!! All was well, I live quite a ways outside the affected zone, and luckily I wasn't traveling in it at the time. My mom had come for her weekend visit so I was staying close to home.

Definitely it sucked for people caught on subway trains or elevators, or in sweltering apartments. The episode also has me thinking about getting some sort of electrical backup, because for whatever reason these events always happen when it's >90 degrees out.
Living in an apartment, it's going to be pretty hard for you to do anything to protect against losing air-conditioning, which requires a lot of power to operate. About all I can think of is to keep a full ice chest plus a fan to blow air over it, or something similar.
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Maddy
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Re: Sophie--Are you okay?

Post by Maddy » Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:30 pm

I wonder what kind of electrical back-up would be suitable for an apartment situation. I've got an inverter-type generator that is the size of a piece of carry-on luggage and that weighs about 50 pounds. It is reasonably quiet and literally sips gas because it throttles up and down depending upon the load. It's 2,000 watts, which I figure is enough to handle the start-up load on a chest freezer. In an emergency, the strategy would be to run the freezer at night and run a light, laptop computer, and espresso machine during the day. (Note my priorities and the one vestige of the city I refuse to give up.) Not sure what kind of load a small air conditioner pulls, but if the maximum pull was less than 2,000 watts, I'd definitely recommend this option. Yamaha or Honda, either way you can't go wrong. You'd definitely need a balcony or other outdoor area.

And in the event of a real emergency, you all are welcome to bug out to my place. Bring your own coffee.
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Re: Sophie--Are you okay?

Post by WiseOne » Sun Jul 21, 2019 8:03 am

Thanks Maddy!

No outdoor space unfortunately, except my fire escape. I suppose that's an option as the fire dept and super will presumably have better things to do than nailing people for putting stuff on the fire escape. I was looking at this as an option, when/if it becomes available:

https://orison.com/

Bugging out is definitely part of the plan, but if this gives me a day or two of power for a freezer and 5000 BTU A/C, that would be nice. Most DIY methods of staying cool (e.g. sleeping under a wet sheet) only work in low humidity. Great if you're stuck in Europe during one of their 100 degree plus heat waves, but not so useful in NYC where the humidity is almost always going to be 90% when it's hot.
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Re: Sophie--Are you okay?

Post by WiseOne » Sun Jul 21, 2019 9:41 am

The info on that webpage is all that's out there right now since it's not on the market yet - they're predicting about a year from now. I think it's supposed to be priced at $2K for a 2.2 kWH panel, with a bit more for the master panel and less for the subsequent ones if you need to add more.

As I understand it, you'd have to put one set of panels on each circuit you want to protect. So you'd have to calculate how many days protection you want and total kwh daily usage on each circuit.
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